Calde of the Long Sun

Chapter 8 -- Peace

Maytera Marble smiled to herself, lifting her head and cocking it to the

right. Her sheets were clean at last, and so was everything else--Maytera

Mint's things, a workskirt that had been badly soiled at the

knees, and the smelly cottons she had dropped into the hamper

before dying.

After strenuous pumping, she rinsed them in the sink and wrung

them out. Her dipper transferred most of the sink water to the wash

boiler before she took out the old wooden stopper and let the rest

drain away; when it had cooled, the water in the wash boiler could

be given to her suffering garden.

With her clever new fingers, she scooped the white bull's congealing

fat from the saucepan. A rag served for a strainer; a chipped cup

received the semiliquid grease. Wiping her hands on another rag,

she considered the tasks that still confronted her: grease the folding

steps first, or hang out this wash?

The wash, to be sure; it could be drying while she greased the steps.

Very likely, it would be dry or nearly dry by the time she finished.

Beyond the doorway, the garden was black with storm. That

wouldn't do! Rain (though Pas knew how badly they needed it)

would spot her clean sheets. Fuming, she put aside the wicker

clothes-basket and stepped out into the night. a hand extended to

catch the first drops.

At least it wasn't raining yet; and the wind (now that she came to

think of it, it had been windier earlier) had fallen. Peering up at the

storm cloud, she realized with a start that it was not a real cloud at

all--that what she had taken for a cloud was in fact the uncanny

flying thing she had glimpsed above the wall, and even stared at

from the roof.

A memory so remote that it seemed to have lain behind her

curved metal skull stirred at this, her third view. Dust flew, as dust

always does when something that has remained motionless for a

long time moves at last.

"_Why don't you dust it?" (Laughter.)_

She would have blinked had she been so built. She looked

down again, down at her dark garden, then up (but reasonably

and prudently up only) at the pale streaks of her clotheslines.

They were still in place, though sometimes the children took

them for drover's whips and jump ropes. Started upward thus

prudently and reasonably, her gaze continued to climb of its own

volition.

"_Why don't you dust it?_"

Laughter filled her as the summer sunshine of a year long past

descends gurgling to fill a wineglass, then died away.

Shaking her head, she went back inside. It was a trifle windy yet

to hang out wash, and still dark anyway. Sunshine always made the

wash smell better; she would wait till daylight and hang it out before

morning prayer. It would be dry after.

When had it been, that sun-drenched field? The jokes and the

laughter, and the overhanging, overawing shadow that had made

them fall silent?

Grease the steps now, and scrub them, too; then it would be light

out and time to hang the wash, the first thin thread of the long sun

cutting the skylands in two.

She mounted the stair to the second floor. Here was that

picture again, the old woman with her doves, blessed by Molpe.

A chubby postulant whose name she could not recall had admired

it; and she, thin, faceless, old Maytera Marble, flattered, had said

that she had posed for Molpe. It was almost the only lie she had

ever told, and she could still see the incredulity in that girl's eyes,

and the shock. Shriven of that lie again and again, she nevertheless

told Maytera Betel at each shriving--Maytera Betel, who was dead now.

She ought to have brought something, an old paintbrush, perhaps, to dab

on her grease with. Racking her brain, she recalled her

toothbrush, retained for decades after the last tooth had failed. (She

wouldn't be needing _that_ any more!) Opening the broken door to

her room... She should fix this, if she could. Should try to,

anyhow. They might not be able to afford a carpenter.

Yet it seemed tonight that she remembered the painter, the little

garden at the center of his house, and the stone bench upon which

the old woman (his mother, really) had sat earlier. Posing gowned

and jeweled as the goddess with a stephane, the dead butterfly

pinned in her hair.

It had been embarrassing, but the painter had wonderful brushes,

not in the least like this worn toothbrush of hers, whose wooden

handle had cracked so badly, whose genuine boar bristles, once so

proudly black, had faded to gray.

She pushed the old toothbrush down into the bull's soft, white fat,

then ran it energetically along the sliding track.

She could not have been a sibyl then, only the sibyls' maid; but

the artist had been a relative of the Senior Sibyl's, who had agreed

to let her pose. Chems could hold a pose much longer than bios. All

artists, he had said, used chems when they could, although he had

used his mother for the old woman because chems never looked

old...

She smiled at that, tilting her head far back and to the right. The

hinges, then the other track.

He had given them the picture when it was done.

She had a gray smear on one black sleeve. Dust from the steps,

most likely. Filthy. She beat the sleeve until the dust was gone, then

started downstairs to fetch her bucket and scrub brush. Had the

bull's grease done what it was supposed to? Perhaps she should have

paid for real oil. She lifted the folding steps tentatively. The grease

had certainly helped. All the way up!

Grafifyingly smooth, so she had saved three cardbits at least,

perhaps more. How had she gotten them down? With the crochet

hook, that was it. But if she did not push the ring up she would not

need it. The steps would have to come down again anyway when she

scrubbed them, and she itched to see them work as they should. An

easy tug on the ring, and down they slid with a puff of dust that was

hardly noticeable.

"_Why don't you dust it?_"

Everyone had laughed, and she had too, though she had been so

shy. He had been tall and--what was it? Five-point-two-five times

stronger than she, with handsome steel features that faded when she

tried to see them again.

All nonsense, really.

Like believing she had posed, after she had told Maytera over and

over that she had lied. She would never have taken these new parts

if... Though they were hers, to be sure.

One more time up the steps. One final time, and here was her old trunk.

She opened the gable window and climbed out onto the roof. If

the neighbors spied her, they would be shocked out of their wits.

_Trunk_ evoked only her earlier search for its owner.

_Footlocker_, that was it. Here was a list of the dresses she had worn

before they had voted to admit her. Her perfume. The commonplace

book that she had kept for the mere pleasure of writing in it,

of practicing her hand. Perhaps if she went back into the attic and

opened her footlocker, she would find them all, and would never

have to look at the thrumming thing overhead again.

Yet she did.

Enormous, though not so big you couldn't see the skylands on

each side of it. Higher up and farther west now, over the market

certainly and nosing toward the Palatine, its long axis bisected by

Cage Street, where convicts were no longer exposed in cages. Its

noise was almost below her threshold of hearing, the purr of a

mountain lion as big as a mountain.

She should go back down now. Get busy. Wash or cook--though

she was dead, and Maytera Betel and the rest dead, too, and

Maytera Mint gone only Pas knew where, and nobody left to cook

for unless the children came.

Enormous darkness high overhead, blotting the sun-drenched

field, the straggling line of servants in which she had stood, and the

soldiers' precise column. She had seen it descend from the sky, at

first a fleck of black that had seemed no bigger than a flake of soot;

had said, "It looks so dirty." A soldier had overheard her and called,

"Why don't you dust it?"

Everyone had laughed, and she had laughed, too, though she had

been humiliated to tears, had tears been possible for her. Angry and

defiant, she had met his eyes and sensed the longing there.

And longed.

How tall he had been! How big and strong! So much steel!

Winged figures the size of gnats sailed this way and that below the

vast, dark bulk; something streaked up toward them as she watched--flared

yellow, like bacon grease dripping into the stove. Some fell.

"Here we are," Auk told Chenille. It was a break in the tunnel wall.

"This leads into the pit?"

"That's what he says. Let me go first, and listen awhile. Beat the

hoof if it sounds a queer lay."

She nodded, resolving that she and her launcher would have

something to say about any queer lay, watched him worm his way

through (a tight squeeze for shoulders as big as his), listened for

minutes that seemed like ten, then heard his booming laugh, faint

and far away.

It was a tight squeeze for her as well, and it seemed her hips

would not go through. She wriggled and swore, recalling Orchid's

dire warnings and that Orchid's were twice--at least twice!--the size

of hers.

The place she was trying so hard to get into was a pit in the pit,

apparently--as deep as a cistern, with no way to go higher, though

Auk must have found one since he was not there.

Her hips scraped through at last. Panting as she knelt on the

uneven soil, she reached back in and got her launcher.

"You coming, Jugs?" He was leaning over the edge, almost

invisible in the darkness.

"Sure. How do I get out of here?"

"There's a little path around the sides." He vanished.

There was indeed--a path a scant cubit wide, as steep as a stair.

She climbed cautiously, careful not to look down, with Gelada's

lantern rattling on the barrel of her launcher. Above, she heard Auk

say, "All right, maybe I will, but not till she gets here. I want her to

see him."

Then her head was above the top and she was looking at the pit. a

stade across, its reaches mere looming darkness, its sheer sides

faced with what looked like shiprock. A wall rose above it on the

side nearest her. She stared up at it without comprehension. turned

her head to look at the shadowy figures around Auk, and looked up

at it again before she recognized it as the familiar, frowning wall of

the Alambrera, which she was now seeing from the other side for

the first time.

Auk called, "C'mere, Jugs. Still got that darkee?"

A vaguely familiar voice ventured, "Might be better not to light it, Auk."

"Shut up."

She took Gelada's lantern off the barrel of her launcher and

advanced hesitantly toward Auk, nearly falling when she tripped

over a roll of rags in the darkness.

Auk said, "You do it, Urus. Keep it pretty near shut," and one of

the men accepted the lantern from her.

The acrid smell of smoke cut through the prevailing reek of

excrement and unwashed bodies; a bearded man with eyes like

the sockets in a skull had removed the lid of a firebox. He puffed

the coals it held until their crimson glow lit his face--a face she

quickly decided she would rather not have seen. A wisp of flame

appeared. Urus held the lantern to it, then closed the shutter,

narrowing the yellow light to a beam no thicker than her

forefinger.

"You want it, Auk?"

"I got no place to put it," Auk told him; and Chenille, edging

nearer, saw that he had his hanger in his right hand and a slug gun in

his left. The blade of the hanger was dark with blood. "Show her

Patera first," he said.

On legs as thin as sticks, the shadowy figures parted; a pencil of

light settled on a dark bundle that stared up at her with Incus's

agonized eyes. A rag covered his mouth.

"Looks cute, don't he?" Auk chuckled.

She ventured, "He really is an augur..."

"He shot a couple of 'em with my needler, Jugs. It got 'em mad,

and they jumped him. We'll cut him loose in a minute, maybe.

Urus, show her the soldier."

Hammerstone was bound as well, though no rag had been tied

over his mouth; she wondered whether it would work on a chem

anyway, and decided that it might not. "I'm sorry, Stony," she said.

"I'll get you out of this. Patera, too."

"They were going to stab him in the throat," Hammerstone told

her. "They'd grabbed him from behind." He spoke slowly and

without rancor, but there was a whorl of self-loathing in his voice, "I

got careless."

"Those ropes are made out of that muscle in the back of your leg,"

Auk told her conversationally. "That's what they got him tied up

with. They're pretty strong, I guess."

Neither she nor Hammerstone replied.

"Only I don't think they'd hold him. Not if he really tried. It'd

take chains. Big ones, if you ask me."

"Hackum, maybe I shouldn't say this--"

"Go ahead."

"What if they jump you and me like they did Patera?"

"I was going to tell you why Hammerstone here don't break loose.

Maybe I ought to do that first."

"Because you've got his slug gun?"

"Uh-huh. Only they had it then, see? They got hold of Incus, and

they made Hammerstone give it to 'em. It takes a lot to kill a

soldier, but a slug gun'll do it. So'll that launcher you got."

She scarcely heard him. When she had struggled through the

narrow opening in the side of the tunnel, the deep humming from

above had so merged with the rush of blood in her ears that she had

assumed it was one with it; now she realized that it actually

proceeded from the dark bulk in the sky that she (like Maytera

Marble) had thought a cloud. She peered up at it, astonished.

"We'll get to that in a minute," Auk told her, looking upward too.

"Terrible Tartaros says it's a airship. That's a thing kind of like the

old man's boat, see? Only it sails through the air instead of water.

The Rani of Trivigaunte's invaded Viron. That's another reason for

us to do like he showed us down there--"

Hammerstone heaved himself upright, throwing aside four stick-limbed

men who tried to hold him down. The sinews that bound his

wrists and ankles broke in a rattattoo of poppings, like the burning

of a string of firecrackers.

Almost casually, Auk thrust his hanger into the ground at his feet

and leveled the slug gun. "Don't try it."

"We got to fight," Hammerstone told him. "Patera and me. We got

to defend the city."

Reluctantly, Chenille trained the launcher Hammerstone had

taught her to load and fire at his broad metal chest. He knelt to tear

off Incus's gag, snapping the cords that had secured Incus's hands

and feet between his fingers.

"Look! Look!" Urus shouted and pointed, then futilely directed

the beam of Gelada's lantern upward. Others around him shouted

and pointed, too.

Another voice, remote but louder than the loudest merely human

voice silenced them, filling the pit with its thunder: "_Convicts, you

are free! Viron has need of every one of you. In the name of all the--in

the Outsider's name, forget your quarrel with the Civil Guard,

which now supports our Charter. Forget any quarrel you may have

with your fellow citizens. Most of all, forget every quarrel among

yourselves!_"

Chenille grasped Auk's elbow. "That's Patera Silk! I recognize his voice!"

Auk could only shake his head, unbelieving. Something--a

tumbling, flying thing that appeared, incredibly, to have a turret and

a buzz gun--had cleared the parapet on the wall and was drifting

into the pit, dropping lower and lower, an armed floater blown

upwind by a wind that was none, hundreds of cubits above the Alambrera.

Chenille's launcher was snatched from her hands and fired as

soon as it had left them, Hammerstone aiming at the immense shape

far above the floater, directing a single missile at it (or perhaps at

the winged figures that streamed from it like smoke), and watching

it expectantly to observe the strike and correct his aim.

"_There Auk!_" thundered a hoarse voice from the floater tumbling

slowly overhead. "_Here girl!_"

A second missile, and Auk was firing the slug gun that had been

Hammerstone's, too, shooting winged troopers who swooped and

soared above the pit firing slug guns of their own.

A minute dot of black fell from the vast flying thing Auk had

called an airship. She saw it streak through the milling cloud of

winged troopers. An instant later, the dark wall of the Alambrera

exploded with a force that rocked the Whorl.

Silk stood in his boyhood bedroom, looking down at the boy who

had been himself. The boy's face was buried in his pillow; by an

effort of will he made it look toward him; each time it turned, its

features dissolved in mist.

He sat down on the sill of the open window, conscious of the

borage growing under it and of lilacs and violets beyond it. A

copybook lay open, waiting, on the sleeping boy's small table; there

were quills beside it, their ends more or less chewed. He ought to

write, he knew--tell this boy who had been himself that he was

taking his blue tunic, and leave him advice that would be of help in

the troubles to come.

Yet he could not settle upon the right words, and he knew that the

boy would soon wake. It was shadeup, and he would be late at his

palaestra; already Mother approached the bed.

What could he say that would have meaning for this boy? That

this boy might recall more than a decade later?

Mother shook his shoulder, and Silk felt his own shoulder

touched; it was strange she could not see him.

_Fear no love_, he wrote; and then: _Carry out the Plan of Pus_.

But Mother's hand was shaking him so hard that the final words were

practically unreadable; _of Pas_ faded from the soft, blue-lined paper

as he watched. Pas was, after all, a thing of the past. Like the boy.

Xiphias and the Prolocutor were standing at the foot of the boy's

bed, which had become his own.

He blinked.

As if to preside over a sacrifice at the Grand Manteion, the

Prolocutor wore mulberry vestments crusted with diamonds and

sapphires, and held the gold baculus that symbolized his authority;

Xiphias had what appeared to be an augur's black robe folded over

his arm. It seemed the wildest of dreams.

His blankets were pushed away; and the surgeon, standing next to

his bed beside Hyacinth, rolled him onto his side and bent to pull off

the bandages he had applied earlier. Silk managed to smile up at

Hyacinth, and she smiled in return--a shy, frightened smile that was

like a kiss.

From the other side of the bed, Colonel Oosik inquired, "Can you

speak, Calde?"

He could not, though it was his emotions that kept him silent.

"He talked to me last night before he went to sleep," Hyacinth told Oosik.

"Silk talk!" Oreb confirmed from the top of a bedpost.

"Please don't sit up." The surgeon laid his hand--a much larger

and stronger one than the hand that had awakened him--upon Silk's

shoulder to prevent it.

"I can speak." he told them. "Your Cognizance. I very much regret

having subjected you to this."

Quetzal shook his head and told Hyacinth, "Perhaps you'd better

get him dressed."

"No time to dawdle, lad!" Xiphias exclaimed. "Shadeup in an hour!

Want them to start shooting again?"

Then the surgeon who had held him down was helping him to rise,

and Hyacinth (who smelled better than an entire garden of flowers)

was helping him into a tunic. "I did this for you last Phaesday night,

remember?"

"Do I still have your azoth?" he asked her. And then, "What in the

Whorl's going on?"

"They sent Oosie to kill you. He just came back and he doesn't

want to."

Silk was looking, or trying to look, into the corners of the room.

Gods and others who were not gods waited there, he felt certain.

watching and nearly visible, their shining heads turned toward him.

He remembered climbing onto Blood's roof and his desperate

struggle with the whiteheaded one, Hyacinth snatching his hatchet

from his waistband. He groped for it, but hatchet and waistband had

vanished alike.

Quetzal muttered, "Somebody will have to tell him what to tell

them. How to make peace."

"I don't expect you to believe me, Your Cognizance--" Hyacinth began.

"Whether I believe you or not, my child, will depend on what you say."

"We didn't! I swear to you by Thelxiepeia and Scalding Scylla--"

"For example. If you were to say that Patera Calde Silk had

violated his oath and disgraced his vocation, I would not believe you."

Standing upon the arm of his mother's reading chair, he had

studied the calde's head, carved by a skillful hand from hard brown

wood. "Is this my father?" Mother's smile as she lifted him down,

warning him not to touch it. "No, no, that's my friend the calde."

Then the calde was dead and buried, and his head buried, too--buried

in the darkest reaches of her closet, although she spoke at

times of burning it in the big black kitchen stove and perhaps

believed eventually that she had. It was not well to have been a

friend of the calde's.

"I know our Patera Calde Silk too well for that," Quetral was

telling Hyacinth. "On the other hand, if you were to say that nothing

of the kind had taken place, I would believe you implicitly, my child."

Xiphias helped Silk to his feet, and Hyacinth pulled up a pair of

unbicached linen drawers that had somehow appeared around his

ankles and were new and clean and not his at all, and tied the cord

for him.

"Calde--"

At that moment, the title sounded like a death sentence. He said,

"I'm only Patera--Only Silk. Nobody's calde now."

Oosik stroked his drooping, white-tipped mustache. "You fear

that because my men and I are loyal to the Ayuntamiento, we will

kill you. I understand. It is undoubtedly true, as this young woman

has said--"

In the presence of the Prolocutor, Oosik was pretending he did

not know Hyacinth, exactly as he himself had tried to pretend he

was not calde;; Silk found wry amusement in that.

"--and already you have almost perished in this foolish fighting,"

Oosik was saying. "Another dies now, even as we speak. On our side

or yours, it does not matter. If it was one of us, we will kill one of

you soon. If one of you, you will kill one of us. Perhaps it will be me.

Perhaps my son, though he has already--"

Xiphias interrupted him. "Couldn't get home, lad! Tried to! Big

night attack! Still fighting! Didn't think they'd try that. You don't

mind my coming back to look out for you?"

Kneeling with his trousers, Hyacinth nodded confirmation. "If

you listen at the window, you can still hear shooting."

Silk sat on the rumpled bed again and pushed his feet into the

legs. "I'm confused. Are we still at Ermine's?"

She nodded again. "In my room."

Oosik had circled the bed to hold his attention. "Would it not be a

great thing, Calde, if we--if you and I, and His Cognizance--could

end this fighting before shadeup?"

With less confidence in his legs than he tried to show, Silk stood

to pull up and adjust his waistband. "That's what I'd hoped to do."

He sat as quickly as he could without loss of dignity.

"We will--"

Quetzal interposed, "We must strike fast. We can't wait for you to

recover, Patera Calde. I wish we could. You were startled to see me

vested like this. My clothes always shock you. I'm afraid."

"So it seems, Your Cognizance."

"I'm under arrest, too, technically. But I'm trying to bring peace,

just as you are."

"We've both failed, in that case, Your Cognizance."

Oosik laid his hand upon Silk's; it felt warm and damp. thick with

muscle. "Do not burden yourself with reproaches, Calde. No!

Success is possible still. Who had you in mind as commander of your

Civil Guard?"

The gods had gone, but one--perhaps crafty Thelxiepeia. whose

day was just beginning--had left behind a small gift of cunning. "If

anyone could put an end to this bloodshed, he would surely deserve

a greater reward than that."

"But if that were all the reward he asked?"

"I'd do everything I could to see that he obtained it."

"Wise Silk!" Oreb cocked a bright black eye approvingly from the

bedpost.

Oosik smiled. "You are better already, I think. I was greatly

concerned for you when I saw you." He looked at the surgeon.

"What do you think, Doctor? Should our calde have more blood?"

Quetzal stiffened, and the surgeon shook his head.

"Achieving peace, Calde, may not be as difficult as you imagine.

Our men and yours must be made to understand that loyalty to the

Ayuntamiento is not disloyalty to you. Nor is loyalty to you

disloyalty to the Ayuntamiento. When I was a young man we had

both. Did you know that?"

Xiphias exclaimed, "It's true, lad!"

"There is a vacancy on the Ayuntamiento. Clearly it must be

filled. On the other hand, there are councillors presently in the

Ayuntamiento. Their places are theirs. Why ought they not retain them?"

A compromise; Silk thought of Maytera Mint, small and

heartrendingly brave upon a white stallion in Sun Street. "The

Alambrera--?"

"Cannot be permitted to fall. The morale of your Civil Guard

would not survive so crushing a humiliation."

"I see." He stood again, this time with more confidence; he felt

weak, yet paradoxically strong enough to face whatever had to be

faced. "The poor, the poorest people of our quarter especially, who

began the insurrection, are anxious to release the convicts there.

They are their friends and relatives."

Quetzal added, "Echidna has commanded it."

Oosik nodded, still smiling. "So I have heard. Many of our

prisoners say so, and a few even claim to have seen her. I repeat,

however, that a successful assault on the Alambrera would be a

disaster. It cannot be permitted. But might not our calde, upon his

assumption of office, declare a general amnesty? A gesture at once

generous and humane?"

"I see," Silk repeated. "Yes, certainly, if it will end the fighting--if

there's even the slightest chance that it will end it. Must I come with

you, Generalissimo?"

"You must do more. You must address both the insurgents and

our own men, forcefully. It can be begun here, from your bed. I

have a means of transmitting your voice to my troops, defending

the Palatine. Afterward we will have to put you in a floater and

take you to the Alambrera, in order that both our men and Mint's

may see you, and see for themselves that there is no trickery. His

Cognizance has agreed to go with you to bless the peace. Many

know already that he has sided with you. When it is seen that my

brigade has come over to you as a body, the rest will come as well."

Oreb crowed, "Silk win!" from the bedpost.

"I'm coming, too," Hyacinth declared.

"You must understand that there is to be no surrender, Calde.

Viron will have chosen to return to its Charter. A

calde--yourself--and an ayuntamiento."

Oosik turned ponderously to Quetzal. "Is that not the system of

government stipulated by Scylla. Your Cognizance?"

"It is, my son, and it is my fondest desire to see it reinstated."

"If we're paraded through the city in this floater," Silk said, "many

of the people who see us are certain to guess that I've been

wounded." In the nick of time he remembered to add, "Generalissimo."

"Nor will we attempt to conceal it, Calde. You yourself have

played a hero's part in the fighting! I must tell Gecko to work that

into your little speech."

Oosik took two steps backward. "Now someone must attend to all

these things, I fear, and there is no one capable of it but myself.

Your pardon, my lady." He bowed. "Your pardon, Calde. I will

return shortly. Your pardon, Your Cognizance."

"Bad man?" mused Oreb

Silk shook his head. "No one who ends murder and hatred is evil,

even if he does it for his own profit. We need such people too much

to let even the gods condemn them. Xiphias, I sent you away last

night at the same time that I sent away His Eminence. Did you leave

at once?"

The old fencing master was shamefaced. "Did you say at once, lad?"

"I don't think so. If I did, I don't recall it."

"I'd brought you this, lad, remember?" He bounded to the most

remote corner of the room and held up the silver-banded cane.

"Valuable!" He parried an imaginary opponents's thrust. "Useful!

Think I'd let them leave it behind in that garden?"

Hyacinth said, "You followed when we carried him up here, didn't

you? I saw you watching us from the foot of the stairs, but I didn't

know you from a rat then."

"I understand." Silk nodded almost imperceptibly. "His Eminence

left at once, I imagine. I had told him to find you if he could, Your

Cognizance. Did he?"

"No," Quetzal said. With halting steps, he made his way to a red

velvet chair and sat, laying the baculus across his knees. "Does it

matter, Patera Calde?"

"Probably not. I'm trying to straighten things out in my mind,

that's all." Silk's forefinger traced pensive circles on his beard-rough

cheek. "By this time, His Eminence may have reached

Maytera Mint--reached General Mint, I should say. It's possible

they have already begun to work out a truce. I hope so, it could

be helpful. Mucor reached her in any event; and when General

Mint heard Mucor's message, she attacked the Palatine hoping to

rescue me--I ought to have anticipated that. My mind wasn't as

clear as it should be last night, or I would never have told her

where I was."

Hyacinth asked, "Mucor? You mean Blood's abram girl? Was she

here?"

"In a sense." Silk found that by staring steadfastly at the yellow

goblets and chocolate cellos that danced across the carpet, it was

possible to speak to Hyacinth without choking, and even to think in

a patchy fashion about what he said. "I met her Phaesday night, and

I talked to her in the Glasshouse before you found me. I'll explain

about her later, though, if I may--it's appalling and rather complex.

The vital point is that she agreed to carry a message to General Mint

for me, and did it. Colonel Oosik's brigade was being held in reserve

when I spoke to him earlier; when the attack came, it must have

been brought up to strengthen the Palatine."

Hyacinth nodded. "That's what he told me before we woke you.

He said it was lucky for you because Councillor Loris ordered him

to send somebody to kill you, but he came himself instead and

brought you a doctor."

"I operated on you yesterday, Calde," the surgeon told Silk, "but I

don't expect you to remember me. You were very nearly dead." He

was horse-faced and balding; his eyes were rimmed with red, and

there were bloodstains on his rumpled green tunic.

"You can't have had much sleep, Doctor."

"Four hours. I wouldn't have slept that much, if my hands hadn't

started to shake. We have over a thousand wounded."

Hyacinth sat on the bed next to Silk. "That's about what we got,

too--four hours, I mean. I must look a hag."

He made the error of trying to verify it, and discovered that his

eyes refused to leave her face. "You are the most beautiful woman in

the Whorl," he said. Her hand found his, but she indicated Quetzal

by a slight tilting of her head.

Quetzal had been dozing--so it appeared--in the red chair; he

looked up as though she had pronounced his name. "Have you a

mirror, my child? There must be a mirror in a suite like this."

"There's a glass in the dressing room, Your Cognizance. It'll show

you your reflection if you ask." Hyacinth nibbled at her full lower

lip. "Only I ought to be in there getting dressed. Oosie will come

back in a minute, I think, with a speech for Patera and one of those

ear things."

Quetzal rose laboriously with the help of his baculus, and Silk's

heart went out to him. How feeble he was! "I've had four hours

sleep, Your Cognizance; Hyacinth less than that, I'm afraid, and the

doctor here about the same; but I don't believe Your Cognizance

can have slept at all."

"People my age don't need much, Patera Calde, but I'd like a

mirror. I have a skin condition. You've been too well bred to

remark upon it, but I do. I carry paint and powder now like a

woman, and fix my face whenever I get the chance."

"In the balneum, Your Cognizance." Hyacinth rose, too. "There's

a minor, and I'll dress while you're in there."

Quetzal tottered away. Hyacinth paused with one hand on the

latch-bar, clearly posing but so lovely that Silk could have forgiven

her things far worse. "You men think it takes women a long while to

get dressed, but it won't take me long this morning. Don't go

without me."

"We won't," Silk promised, and held his breath until the boudoir

door closed behind her.

"Bad thing," Oreb muttered from a bedpost.

Xiphias displayed the silver-banded cane to Silk. "Now I can show

you this, lad! Modest? Proper? Augur can't wear a sword, right?

But you can carry this! Had a stick first time you came, didn't you?"

"Bad thing!" Oreb dropped down upon Silk's shoulder.

"Yes, I had a walking stick then. It's gone now, I'm afraid. I broke it."

"Won't break this! Watch!" Between Xiphias's hands, the cane's

head separated from its brown wooden shaft, exposing a straight,

slender, double-edged blade. "Twist, and pull them apart! You try it!"

"I'd much rather put them back together." Silk accepted the cane

from him; it seemed heavy for a walking stick, and somewhat light

for a sword. "It's a bad thing, as Oreb says."

"Nickel in that steel! Chrome, too! Truth! Could parry an azoth!

Believe that?"

Silk shuddered. "I suppose so. I had an azoth once and couldn't

cut through a steel door with it."

The azoth reminded him of Hyacinth's gold-plated needler;

hurriedly, he put his hand in his pocket. "Here it is. I've got to return

this to her. I was.afraid that it would be gone, somehow, though I

can't imagine who might have taken it, except Hyacinth herself." He

laid it on the peach-colored sheet.

"I gave your big one back, lad. Still got it?"

Silk shook his head, and Xiphias began to prowl around the

room, opening cabinets and examining shelves.

"This cane will be useful, I admit," Silk told him, "but I really don't

require a needler."

Xiphias whirled to confront him, holding it out. "Going to make

peace, aren't you?"

"I hope to, Master Xiphias, and that's exactly--"

"What if they don't like the way you're making it, lad? Take it!"

"Here you are, Calde." Oosik bustled in with a sheet of paper and

a black object that seemed more like a flower molded from synthetic

than an actual ear. "I'll turn it on before I pass it to you, and all

you'll have to do is talk into it. Do you understand? My loudspeakers

will repeat everything that you say, and everyone will hear you.

Here's your speech."

He handed Silk the paper. "It would be best for you to read it over

first. Insert some thoughts of your own if you like. I would not

deviate too far from the text, however."

Words crawled across the sheet like ants, some bearing meaning

in their black jaws, most with none. _The insurgent forces. The Civil

Guard. The rebellion. The commissioners and the Ayuntamiento.

The Army. The arms in the Alambrera. The insurgents and the

Guard. Peace_.

There it was at last. _Peace_.

"All right." Silk let the sheet fall into his lap.

Oosik signaled to someone in the outer room, waited for a reply

that soon came, cleared his throat, and held the ear to his lips. "This

Is Generalissimo Oosik of the Calde's Guard. Hear me all ranks,

and especially you rebels. You're fighting us because you want to

make Patera Silk Calde, but Calde Silk is with us. He is with the

Guard, because he knows that we are with him. Now you soldiers.

Your duty is to obey our calde. He is sitting here beside me. Hear

his instructions."

Silk wanted his old chipped ambion very badly; his hands sought

it blindly as he spoke, rattling the paper. "My fellow citizens, what

Generalissimo Oosik has just told you is true. Are we not--" The

words seemed predisposed to hide behind his trembling fingers.

"Are we not, every one of us, citizens of Viron? On this historic

day, my fellow citizen--" The type blurred, and the next line began

a meaningless half sentence.

"Our city is in great danger," he said. "I believe the whole Whorl's

in great danger, though I can't be sure."

He coughed and spat clotted blood on the carpet. "Please excuse

me. I've been wounded. It doesn't matter, because I'm not going to

die. Neither are you, if only you'll listen."

Faintly, he heard his words re-echoed in the night beyond

Ermine's walls: "_You'll listen_." The loudspeakers Oosik had

mentioned, mouths with stentorian voices, had heard him in some

fashion, and in some fashion repeated his thoughts.

The door of the balneum opened. Framed in the doorway,

Quetzal gave him an encouraging nod, and Oreb flew back to his

post on the bedpost.

"We can't rebel against ourselves," Silk said. "So there is no

rebellion. There is no insurrection, and none of you are insurgents.

We can fight among ourselves, of course, and we've been doing it. It

was necessary, but the time of its necessity is over. There is a calde

again--I am your calde. We needed rain, and we have gotten rain."

He paused to look across the room at the rich smoke-gray drapes.

"Master Xiphias, will you open that window for me, please? Thank you."

He drew a deep and somewhat painful breath of cool, damp air.

"We've had rain, and if I'm any judge of weather, we'll get more.

Now let's have peace--it's a gift we can provide ourselves, one more

precious than rain. Let's have peace."

(What was it the captain had said whole ages ago in that inn?)

"Many of you are hungry. We plan to buy food with city funds and

sell it to you cheaply. Not free, because there are always people who

will waste anything free. But very cheaply, so that even beggars will

be able to buy enough. My Guard will release the convicts from the

pits. Generalissimo Oosik, His Cognizance the Prolocutor, and I are

going to the Alambrera this morning, and I'll order it. All convicts

are pardoned as of this moment--I pardon them. They'll be hungry

and weak, so please share whatever food you have with them."

He recalled his own hunger, hunger at the manse and worse

hunger underground, gnawing hunger that had become a sort of

illness by the time Mamelta located the strange, steaming meals of

the underground tower. "We had a poor harvest this year." he said.

"Let us pray, every one of us, for a better one next year. I've prayed

for that often, and I'll pray for it again; but if we want to have

enough to eat for the rest of our lives, we must have water for our

fields when the rains fail.

"There are ancient tunnels under the city. Some of you can

confirm that because you've come upon them while digging foundations.

They reach Lake Limna--I know that, because I've been in them. If we can

break through near the lake--and I'm sure we can--we can use them to

carry water to the farms. Then we'll all have

plenty of food, cheaply, for a long time." He wanted to say, until it's

time for us to leave this whorl behind us, but he bit the words back,

pausing instead to watch the gray drapes sway in the breeze and

listen to his own voice through the open window.

"If you have been fighting for me, don't use your weapons again

unless you're attacked. If you're a Guardsman, you have sworn that

you'll obey your officers." (He could not be sure of that, but it was

so probable that he asserted it boldly.) "Ultimately, that means

Generalissimo Oosik, who commands both the Guard and the

Army. You've already heard what he has to say. He's for peace. So am I."

Oosik pointed to himself, then to the ear; and Silk added, "You'll

hear him again, very soon."

He felt that the shade should be up by now--indeed that it was

past that time, the hour of first light, and time for the morning

prayer to Thelxiepeia; yet the city beyond the gray drapes was still

twilit. "To you whose loyalty is to the Ayuntamiento, I have two things to

say. The first is that you're fighting--dying, many of you--for an

institution that needs no defense. Neither I nor Generalissimo Oosik nor

General Mint desires to destroy it. So why shouldn't

there be peace? Help us make peace!

"The second is that the Ayuntamiento was created by our Charter.

Were it not for our Charter, it would have no right to exist, and

wouldn't exist. Our Charter grants to you--to you, the people of

Viron, and not to any official--the right to choose a new calde

whenever the position is vacant. It then makes the Ayuntamiento

subject to the calde you have chosen. I need not tell you that our

Charter proceeds from the immortal gods. All of you know that.

Generalissimo Oosik and I have been consulting His Cognizance the

Prolocutor on this matter of the calde and the Ayuntamiento. He is

here with us, and if I have misinformed you he will correct me, I feel

certain."

With his left hand Quetzal accepted the ear; his right traced a

trembling sign of addition. "Blessed be you in the Most Sacred

Name of Pas, the Father of the Gods, in that of Gracious Echidna,

His consort, in those of the Sons and their Daughters alike, this day

and forever, in the name of their eldest child, Scylla, Patroness of

this--"

He continued to speak, but Silk's attention deserted him; the

door of the dressing room had opened. Hyacinth stepped through it,

radiantly lovely in a flowing gown of scarlet silk. In a low voice she

said, "The glass in there just told me the Ayuntamiento's offering

ten thousand to anybody who kills you and two thousand each for

Oosie and His Cognizance. I thought you should know."

Silk nodded and thanked her; Oosik muttered, "It was only to be

expected."

"Consider, my children," Quetzal was saying, "how painful it must

be to Succoring Scylla to see the sons and daughters of the city that

she founded clawing one another's eyes. She has provided everything

we require. First of all our Charter, the foundation of peace

and justice. If we wish to regain her favor we need only return to it.

If we wish to reclaim the peace we have lost, again we need only

return to her Charter. We wish justice, I know. I wish it myself, and

the wish for it has been planted in every bosom by Great Pas. Even

the worst of us wish to live in holiness, too. Perhaps there are a few

ingrates who don't, but they are very few. We wish all these things,

and we can make them ours by one simple act. Let us return to our

Charter. That is what the gods desire. Let us accept this anointed

augur, Patera Calde Silk. The gods desire that, too. To conform to

Sustaining Scylla's Charter, we must have a calde, and the smallest

of our children know on whom the choice has fallen. If you have any

doubts on these topics, my children, I beg you to consult the

anointed augur into whose care you are given. There is one, you

know, in every quarter. Or you may consult the next you see, or any

holy sibyl. They will tell you that the path of duty is not difficult but

simple and plain."

Quetzal paused, exhaling with a slight hiss. "Now, my children, a

most painful matter. Word has come to me that devils in human

shape are seeking our destruction. Falsely and evilly. they promise

money they have not got and will not pay, for our blood. Do not

believe their lies. Their lies offend the gods. Anyone who slays good

men for money is worse than a devil, and anyone who slays for

money he will never see is a fool. Worse than a fool, a dupe."

Oosik reached for the ear, but Quetzal shook his head.

"My children, it will soon be shadeup. A new day. Let it be a day

of peace. Let us stand together. Let us stand by the gods, by their

Charter, and by the calde they have chosen for us. I bid you farewell

for the present, but soon I hope to talk to you face-to-face and bless

you for the peace you've given our city. Now I believe Generalissimo

Oosik wants to speak to you again."

Oosik cleared his throat. "This is the Generalissimo. Operations

against the rebels are canceled, effective at once. Every officer will

be held responsible for his obedience to my order and for the actions

of his troopers or soldiers, as the case may be. Calde Silk and His

Cognizance are going through the city on one of our floaters. I

expect every officer, every trooper, and every soldier to receive

them in a manner fully in accordance with loyalty and good discipline.

"My Calde, have you anything further to say?"

"Yes, I do." Silk leaned toward him, speaking into the ear. "Please

stop fighting. It was needful, as I said; but it's become senseless.

Stop them if you can, Maytera Mint. General Mint, please stop

them. Peace is within our grasp--from the moment we accept it, all

of us have won."

He straightened up, savoring the wonder of the ear. It really does

look like a black flower, he thought, a flower meant to bloom at

night; and because it's bloomed, shadeup is on the way, even if the

night looks nearly as dark as ever.

To the ear he added, "We'll be with you in a few minutes, on the

floater Generalissimo Oosik told you about. Don't shoot us, please.

We certainly won't shoot you. No one will." He turned to Oosik for

confirmation, and Oosik nodded vigorously.

"Not even if you shoot me. I'll stand up if I can, so you can see

me." He paused. Was there more to say?

Attenuated like distant thunder, his words flew back to him

through the window, an ebbing storm: "_Can see me_."

"Those who fought for Viron will be rewarded, regardless of the

side on which they fought. Maytera Marble, if you can hear this,

please come to the floater. I need you badly, so please come. Auk,

too, and Chenille." Had Kypris possessed Hyacinth, rendering her

irresistible? Could she possess two women simultaneously? For a

second he pondered the question among the remembered faces of

his teachers at the schola. He ought to end this, he thought, by

invoking the gods; but the time-worn honorifics caught in his throat.

"Until I see you," he said at last, "please pray for me--for our city,

and for all of us. Pray to Kind Kypris, who is love. Pray especially to

the Outsider, because he is the god whose time is coming and I am

the help he's sent us."

He let the hand that held the ear fall, and Oosik took it from him.

"For which we all give thanks," Oosik said, and Oreb muttered,

"Watch out."

No one spoke after that. Although Oosik and his surgeon,

Xiphias, and Quetzal were all present, the bedroom felt empty.

Beyond the window, a hush hung over the Palatine. No street

vendor hawked his wares and no gun spoke.

Peace.

Peace here, at least; for those on the Palatine and those surrounding

it, there was peace. Incredible as it seemed, hundreds--thousands--had

ceased fighting, merely because he, Silk, had told them to.

He felt better; perhaps peace, like blood, made one feel better.

He was stronger, though he was still not strong. The surgeon had

poured blood--more blood--into him while he slept, and that sleep

must have been something akin to a coma, because the needle had

not awakened him. Another's blood--another's life--had let him

live, though he had been certain the night before that he would die

that night. Premonitions born of weakness could be frustrated,

clearly; he would have to remember that. With friends to help, a

man could make his own fate.